Chapter 118: Battle (Part 1)

"How many of those shrimps are there? Mork tells me they shouldn't be more than a few more than those big-bellied things that just arrived!" Skarsnik asked, as if to himself.

Mozhetian was already used to his boss's way of speaking; he hung his head and reported what he knew.

"Those Snotlings, they just popped out of the ground, they can't speak clearly!" This tall Goblin seemed to have injured his mouth during yesterday's siege, and his speech was a bit whistly.

"They were shouting that there's a lot of floating cloth, and a lot of patterns on the cloth too!"

"Lots of banners?" Skarsnik began to stroke his chin. "Let me go take a look! I'm going to take my personal guard boys with me!"

Skarsnik began to lose hope in his subordinates' stupidity; he kicked Gobla to help his pet squeeze out of the burrow, then tightened his sun-shading hood and walked toward the woods at the southern foothills.

"Let me take a look!" Skarsnik used his staff as a hiking stick to climb onto a protruding rock.

The Grey Mountains had rocky terrain and thin soil, so the trees were relatively short and sparse. Skarsnik cupped his hands over his eyes to block the glaring sun and looked down. He saw a large cluster of banners gathered together, with dust billowing behind them, and the sound of human shouting and horses neighing filled his ears.

"Something's not right, I feel like something's not right!" Skarsnik pounded his staff on the rock, making a crisp "Bang! Bang!" sound. Besides the sharp trident-shaped head, the tail of the staff had also been sharpened for stabbing.

"There shouldn't be this many shrimps, they shouldn't have this many!" Skarsnik muttered to himself.

"Laoyueya! You go! Take a few squads of boys to test them out! If you can roll them over, strip everything they're wearing off for me—those are all good things! If there are too many shrimps, you pull back. Even though our boys die and pop up in batches, it still takes time!"

Skarsnik looked at the few Night Goblin leaders behind him and finally decided to entrust this task, which required some intelligence and judgment, to the Shaman who had followed him the longest.

"Don't let all my boys die, otherwise, never mind the Pillar City, we won't even be able to take the Dwarf-fortress in front of us! Mork tells me I will roll back to the Badlands and become the boss of the Pillar City!"

Skarsnik's intelligence backfired at this moment; if it were an ordinary Greenskin Warlord, they would have simply pressed the entire army forward, and this second group of Human troops would undoubtedly have been forced to flee, but his caution successfully bought the Humans time.

When Laoyueya gathered a few squads of boys and snuck down the mountain, he discovered there were only two hundred or so Humans, among whom the true Knights numbered no more than two hands. The Night Goblin Shaman sent a personal guard to report to the boss and immediately threw himself into the battle.

However, in the short ten-plus minutes from Skarsnik climbing up to scout to sending his men to investigate and receiving the report, Buerjin had already directed the Dwarfs of the caravan to crush the Greenskin interception force under the suppression of the Artillery and continued to advance toward Karak-Azgalaz!

After the caravan on the eastern route broke the stalemate and made progress, before Skarsnik, who hadn't figured out the strength of the Humans in the south, could respond, the battle situation changed again.

First were the Dwarfs besieged in Fearless Fort; seeing their kin and their Human friends from Bretonnia join forces to come to their aid, they were naturally too excited to sit and wait for the reinforcements to reach the foot of the city walls.

After all, looking down from a height, the view was wide, and the Shanbao was equipped with dedicated lookouts as usual; the lord here was aware of the thinness of the reinforcements' numbers.

The Dwarfs in the city knew that if they missed this support, whether they could hold out until the next batch of reinforcements arrived was an unknown.

The group of Night Goblins in front of them were wickedly terrifying and equally adept at fighting in underground tunnels; once the city walls were breached, whether they could successfully break out and how many clansmen could escape was truly unbearable to imagine.

Very quickly, a small gap opened in the gate of Karak-Azgalaz, and one after another, the Sons of the Mountains filed out.

The Ranger shack where Snuo was hiding was closer to Fearless Fort, and he could see that many of his kin's armor was covered in scratches and scrapes, clearly having experienced battle after battle.

On the other hand, the Ogre Mercenaries, who had been silent until now, sensed that the scales of victory were tilting and also made their move.

Iron-Head Ahetanmu did not turn on the surrounding Greenskins as agreed the moment he heard the sound of artillery, though such behavior was within Snuo's expectations.

Being able to successfully travel south from the Ogre Kingdoms in the northeast to the middle of the Grey Mountains, Ahetanmu was clearly not as simple and honest as he appeared.

If he lacked strength and wisdom, his head and those of his men would have long been hanging in the hall of the Exorcist Conclave or taken as merit by Dwarf Slayers and Questing Knights.

Snuo saw those tall men with protruding bellies slaughter their way out of a hidden cave; they bent over, using the clubs in their hands to sweep at the Night Goblins who didn't even reach their knees, sending patches of Goblins flying into mid-air.

Every so often, they would stop their weapons to grab one or two Night Goblins with their bare hands, and without cleaning or skinning them, they would stuff them directly into their mouths, chew a couple of times, and continue attacking. Clearly, Skarsnik had not provided these big-bellied fellows with enough food.

To the already timid Night Goblins, this behavior was a massive blow to morale; these short fellows had to fight these huge monsters amidst the flying flesh and fungal tissue of their fallen comrades, and what was even more terrifying was that these bloody monsters were even critiquing the taste of their own kin.

The Humans in the south, with the help of the Ogres, were also gradually crushing the line organized by Laoyueya. This Night Goblin Shaman had released two or three Xiao Waaagh spells in a row.

Snuo could recognize the Evil Moon Curse he had seen before and a missile-type spell called Gaze of Mork, which condensed the resentment of the surrounding kin into green missiles and shot them at the enemy.

But these little tricks had very little effect on the tall and fat Ogres; they were almost completely undisturbed.

"Boss, are, are we going to change places and keep Waaagh-ing?" a Night Goblin leader standing beside Skarsnik asked upon seeing this.

"Those damn fatties! I knew it! That new boy not coming back with them might mean he got chewed up!" Skarsnik yelled.

He had realized something was wrong after listening to the Ogres' explanation early this morning, but because he needed these big guys who could attack city walls too much, he couldn't drive them away based on a gut feeling.

Skarsnik had originally planned to test the Ogres' mettle at night while maintaining certain precautions, but he hadn't expected these guys to turn on him at noon.

Thanks to Dan Teng i, French Chasseur Major Youli, Swimming White Cloud, and barryyu for the monthly tickets.